1. Field of Intention
This invention relates to                1. IV dripping monitoring        2. Use of barcode in IV monitoring        
2. Prior Art
IV dripping usually takes a long time. Attempts have been made to automatically monitor the process and there are some existing systems. Most of them use physical approaches.
One category of methods is to count the drops, and these are typically done by using optical sensors. There are several US patents falls in this category, for example:                1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,383,252 Intravenous Drip Feed Monitor, which uses combination of a diode and phototransistor to detect drips.        2. U.S. Pat. No. 6,736,801 Method and Apparatus for Monitoring Intravenous Drips, which uses infrared or other types of emitter and a sensor combined to count the drips.        
Apparatus that counts number of drops can serve chiefly two purposes:                1. Alarm when the dripping speed deviates too much from a predetermined value        2. Alarm when dripping has stopped to prevent infiltration        
Our invention addresses these problems from a different perspective. We use camera to record the dripping process and analyze its speed from the video. We also detect the surface of liquid in the drip chamber and alarm the patient when it begins to fall.